Iban continued steadfastly onward, traveling at first at the slow speed of sound, but as he picked up space debris he accelerated close to the speed of light. Iban changed course as he went, circling toward a large, uninhabited planet by the name of Saderinis. It was a day's journey of intense monotony - a day in which Iban's computer mind idled meaninglessly and wasn't bothered in the slightest. At Saderinis, Iban aimed directly for the core, diving into the center of the great gas giant and using its energy to slow himself down close to the center. The that point, only a thousand feet out - nearly touching a solid core of the planet - he took violent action. Absorbing the entire gaseous mass of the planet, he poured the energy into the small stone core, increasing its mass past the critical point and turning it into a black hole. Iban went still further, coordinating the fall of energy as only a computer could, and using the immense gravity to drive a tunnel through space-time. In the few seconds the wormhole lasted, Iban dove in, joining the stray energy in streaking out of a small white hole that formed not forty thousand miles from Hollowstar. Ricocheting off the Third Kingdom, Iban dove toward Hollowstar Proper, which was cunningly disguised as a star.
Unflinchingly, Iban dove directly into the blinding force field, hurling off part his body in a huge wave of energy that sliced cleanly through the barrier. Hollowstar's force field reacted, filling in the gap with an electric surge that created a bolt of lightning in both directions through the hole, creating a crater on the ground within and creating a solar flare without that would be visible from light-years away. Iban dodged this bolt, circling sideways and plowing through the soil in a long quadratic curve before rising five feet above the ground and hovering.
This was not the place to give his ultimatum. Iban could see no life within a hundred miles. Picking a direction at random, he set off.
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"What was that?" Janem, the Black King of Hollowstar, stood before a control terminal, gaping at the energy readings and visual. Something had punched clean through the ancient force field - a feat that Janem had assumed impossible - and the counterblast was of a power that Janem had never seen in any arena battle. A blue bolt of lightning cut through a yellow surface, viewed from both sides. Streaks of flame covered a fortunately uninhabited area, and Janem was suddenly struck with the thought that the instruments he had long taken for granted must be even more amazing to pick this up properly.
"He's back." Gresholm, chief adviser to the king of Hollowstar for longer than anyone could remember, turned to look at the screen.
"Who?"
"Iban."
"Iban? I haven't heard much about him..." Janem blanched. "I heard that he was made by the Gold King, yet he was greater than his creator. He destroyed a thousand worlds and not even the King's own forces could oppose him."
"You heard wrong. Algen took a strong interest in this. Iban destroyed only eighty-four worlds, and he was not greater than his maker. I call him the Final Sword of Hollowstar. Hollowstar will never make anything more deadly - but did you ever hear that he fled from Hollowstar?"
"I thought he left to destroy a world. Why..." Suddenly it dawned on Janem. "Why didn't he destroy Hollowstar?"
"Because he would have died. Iban did not defeat all of Algen's machinations in pitched battle. He knows when to retreat."
"Who drove him away?"
"I did."
Janem looked back at the screen, which now registered a repaired force field over a scarred landscape, dug down to deep scars in the iron core of the world. Icons on the sides offered to replay the attack animations on demand. "Can you do it again?"
"I haven't changed."
Janem looked at Gresholm, puzzled, but he quickly caught on. "Has he?"
"He must have. According to the original design, he shouldn't have been able to destroy more than one inhabited planet every eight years. In his most destructive period, he averaged three per year over a period of three years."
"What will it take to destroy him?"
"Could you kill Algen?" Gresholm's tone became slightly mocking as he called attention to the superiority of his previous master, whose engineering genius had held off the army-building sorcerer Melchus and the military genius Miran. Janem's evil was comparable to that of his father Melchas, but his skill wasn't.
"Don't remind me of him. You could kill him, couldn't you?"
Gresholm hesitated. "Yes, I could have."
"Then kill Iban!"
Gresholm nodded. "Will try."
Janem stared at Gresholm's retreating back, then as the door shut, Janem walked over to another terminal. He was becoming more and more amazed with the work of the First King, and he was going to try something. This was the Region Definition terminal, meant for populating planets after the heavy worldbuilder did its work. Janem hesitated. He had no idea how the controls worked. Oh well, it probably understood the common tongue, just like everything else in the palace. Sometimes Janem wondered why the floor didn't make wisecracks. Maybe it was because one of the walls actually did.
Desperately hoping that this particular machine was friendly, Janem ordered, "Turn Iban into a floor tile."
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